


Melodies from the Green Veld

by endeni



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Ancestral Plane, Blanket Permission, Gen, Heart-Shaped Herb, Infinity Gems, Infinity War Speculation, Podfic Welcome, Post-Black Panther (2018), Post-Infinity War, Speculation, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, the Soul Stone is in Wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 14:36:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13789791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endeni/pseuds/endeni
Summary: T’Challa thought he was going to be the last Black Panther.





	Melodies from the Green Veld

**Author's Note:**

> Not betaed, so feel free to point out any issues. ;)

T’Challa kneels on the ground, careless of the dirt staining his clothes.

Around him, the warm alcove that for millennia sheltered the Heart-Shaped Herb lies jarringly empty, barren.

T’Challa reaches into his robes, fingers closing on the precious bundle resting inside his pocket, its power thrumming though flesh and fabric, making his teeth rattle, his brain buzz.

Slowly, he unwraps it from the piece of cloth he’s used to carry it around, revealing the glowing amber light within.

After Thanos’ defeat, the Stones were sent to scatter through the universe once more, vanishing in bright streaks of light pointing to the sky.

All but one. Like a compass turning North, the Soul Stone floated placidly into T’Challa’s hands, its pulsing light creating ghostly shadows over the battlefield.

Thanos had cut out a deep chunk of Wakandan territory and taken the Stone out of Wakanda’s ground. It seems only right for T’Challa to put it back in.

Reaching down with one hand, T’Challa makes a small hole into the damp soil and deposits the Stone in it. Then, he covers it up. Here, in the City of Dead, it feels like a ceremonial burial.

For a moment, a faint glow remains, still visible even through the dirt. Then it fades away.

T’Challa is no shaman. Still, he closes his eyes and prays. To his ancestors. To Bast, to the godlike beings who created the Soul Stone and sent it to Wakanda. (Not for the first time, he considers the heretic thought, the likelihood of them being one and the same. And if so, what does it matter the names people use to call them by?)

When T’Challa opens his eyes, his cousin is waiting for him, on the green veld of the ancestral plane, its violet sky shining above them in swaying bands of color.

T’Challa feels short of breath. He thought he’d never be able to come back here, to this plane’s otherworldly beauty.

“T’Challa,” his cousin says.

T’Challa looks at him. Erik, N'Jadaka, Killmonger. So many facets of the same splintered soul. He’s wearing a long dark robe, styled and decorated in Wakandan fashion. And a pair of round glasses over his nose. They look almost incongruous on him.

Somewhere inside, T’Challa is still incandescently furious with the other man. For everything, for what he did to Zuri, for attacking his sister, putting his mother in danger.

Yet, somehow, it’s fitting that Erik should be the one welcoming him back to this plane, not his own father or Zuri (as much as he misses him, misses them) or anyone else. What’s between the two of them still feels too painful and raw, too unfinished. And as much as he feels anger, seeing Erik also makes T’Challa unbearably sad. For having been forced to kill him. For the child that man had been and what had been done to him.

“I’m sorry,” T’Challa quietly says, his voice echoing into the open veld.

Erik shrugs.

“S’fine,” he replies with a smirk and for a moment the image of the man in front of him flickers into that of a small boy, the smirk turning into a genuine smile.

“Pops’s here,” the boy says, before turning back into the man T’Challa knows, the smile somehow still in place.

T’Challa has never seen the other man smile before. It’s a sight even more jarring than those glasses, he thinks with an uncertain, rueful smile of his own.

The two of them stand like that, looking at each other without speaking, for a moment that feels both interminable and no time at all.

“So is this what you see too?” Erik asks then, breaking the silence and looking around himself with an inquisitive air, “the green and the purple? How it usually is?”

T’Challa blinks, taken aback, then nods.

He gets an answering grimace. “Right,” his cousin says. “Used to be just the old Oakland apartment. Me and my pops. Took me a while.”

Like whatever, whoever was outside of it was just... inaccessible to him. The thought squeezes at T’Challa’s heart.

A life cut off from his home, his traditions, his history. T’Challa wonders if that’s the real reason why Erik burned down the Herb, if that was all it had showed him.

 _I never asked_ , he thinks suddenly, incongruously, _what happened to your mother_.

“Wakanda’s sunsets are beautiful but this shit ain't half bad, ain’t it?” Erik asks before T’Challa is able to give voice to his thoughts. His cousin’s head is tilted sideways now, as if his attention had been captured by far-away music only he is able to hear. And that smile, that smile is back on his lips.

Yes, T’Challa can’t help but agree, looking at him. _Not half bad_. Because Erik _does_ looks good. He looks… at peace. Incredibly, finally free from all the anger and rancor.

There’s a lump in T’Challa’s throat now. “Erik…” he starts and tries to put it all into words. How his cousin was the push T’Challa needed after all, how he’s been trying to make amends, for himself and his father, how opening Wakanda up to the rest of the world was probably what saved them all from disaster after Thanos’ coming, what helped Wakanda be ready when they needed it the most.

Erik raises a single eyebrow and T’Challa realizes he doesn’t need to articulate any of that after all, not here.

“Thank you,” he says instead, voice choked with emotion.

The other man nods, magnanimous and serene.

“See ya, cousin,” says Erik Killmonger, says N'Jadaka, son of N'Jobu, his voice eerie and distant, eyes going half-lidded to the music and, oh, the melody is so sweet, T’Challa thinks he can hear it too now, can see people dancing to it in the background amid the tall bushes of grass, people raising their hands and shaking their body to the rhythm, joining into song.

 _“Wait_ ,” T’Challa says, suddenly realizing, tears in his eyes. _Wait! Zuri. Baba-_

With a gasp, he finds himself back to his own body, in the necropolis beneath the Golden City, still kneeling on his hands and feet on the bare ground, stiff and sore in a way that speaks to him having been in that position for too long.

T’Challa shakes, body rebelling in the aftermath of his vision.

Breathe, he tells himself, _breathe._

A breath, another, and when T’Challa raises his eyes he sees that, around him, small, vibrant green buds of the Heart-Shaped Herb have already reclaimed the empty ground, promising to turn it once more into the lush garden it was.

T’Challa smiles, in wonder and amazement. He raises one hand to cup one of the small buds, feeling the soft texture of it against his fingertips.

Supposedly, only beings of immense power should be able to wield an Infinity Stone.

And yet.

The thought chases itself around T’Challa’s mind.

Before Thanos tore it from the Wakandan ground, the Soul Stone has been with T’Challa’s people for over ten thousand years, their history and culture and collective consciousness slowly percolating within its core, until the Stone was Wakanda’s as much Wakanda was the Stone’s.

Like a small amount of vibranium runs into the blood, bones and marrow of every Wakandan, some of the power of the Stone, running from the ground directly into the Heart-Shaped Herb and into the blood of every Black Panther there has been was flowing, however diluted, into T’Challa’s veins even now.

But, of course, more than that, the Soul Stone could never hurt the Panther. For they both belong to Wakanda and whatever sparking of consciousness and intelligence lives inside the Stone recognizes it too.

T’Challa is the Black Panther, Wakanda’s protector, in a long line stretching from Bashenga to his own father to himself. (In his head, he can still hear that sweet song, his ancestors’ call, can see his cousin’s smile.)

Yes, T’Challa thinks. He won’t be the last.


End file.
